Friday, January 16, 2015

Ranji Trophy 14-15: Jharkhand vs Himachal Pradesh

It was a weird sort of game. A tale of 2 big second wicket stands followed by a collapses. Batting first, Himachal had a big 2nd wicket stand between Ankus Bains and Ankit Kalsi. The second days play was lost due to weather. Then Himachal had a spectacular collapse from 224/1 to 304 all out. Jharkhand produced a big second wicket stand of their own. Going into the final day they looked set for the first innings lead. Instead they suffered a collapse of their own moving from 127 for 1 to 232 all out. Though they managed to reduce Himachal to 91 for 6 the second time around, time had run out . Himachal managed to take the vital innings lead.

Sumit Kumar made his first class debut for Jharkhand. He is now the 3rd wicket-keeper to play for the team this Ranji season.

Highlights: 127 run 2nd wicket partnership between Nemat & Tiwary which gave a glimmer of hope for the innings lead. Also taking out the last 8 wickets for 80 runs after conceding a 200 plus 2nd wicket stand in the 1st innings.

Season Stats:

Top Scorer: Ishank Jaggi 371 @53.00

Most Wickets: Shahbaz Nadeem 17 @21.76

Standings - 6 points from 5 games. Drop down to 8th place. A knock-out berth is now only a arithmetic possibility and not a realistic chance/

Coming Up Next - 4th place Hyderabad.

P.S. The Jharkhand captaincy has changed mid-season with Kumar Deobrat now at the helm. Saurabh Tiwary apparently decided that captaincy was taking a toll on his batting and decided to step down to focus on his game.